Design by okb-buro.comThe first time I approached the new General Referral Hospital in Niamey in June 2018, I thought it looked like a prison building, huge and isolated in the landscape. After leaving the center of Niger’s capital, my colleague and I drove for 15–20 minutes, then turned left after the Gendarmerie Nationale; we found ourselves on an arid, …
Design by okb-buro.comDuring the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, hospitals have served a dual role in regards to infection control and management. Hospital emergency rooms and intensive care units have been overrun with COVID-19 patients coming from the community. Hospitals have also been sites of infectious disease spread as healthcare workers and patients share space, air, and ultimately, germs. Hospitals exist …
Design by okb-buro.comOn a fresh autumn day in 2019, under Madrid’s deep-blue sky, I went for a morning coffee with Ernesto, an infectious-disease physician working in one of Spain’s largest public university hospitals, located in the city center. At the time, I was doing fieldwork on the consequences of Spain’s austerity policies for public healthcare in Madrid. Before passing …
Design by okb-buro.comArun Bhaiya[1] –Ramesh, I am giving you these medicines. Count them and tell me how many tablets do you have?
Arun Bhaiya throws the seven medicine strips towards Ramesh, standing nearly one-feet away, a printed cotton mask on his face, with hands wide open, sort of like a ball-catching position. The medicine strips slip through his …
‘If you are bleeding a lot…go to hospital’. Cristiano, a community health volunteer gave a health seminar to 12 community members inside a dark concrete house, in a village outside a small town in Timor-Leste’s central mountains. Cristiano explained some of the danger signals to watch out for during pregnancy. ‘Go to hospital’, Cristiano repeated, as he described each symptom …
Design by okb-buro.comHand sketches shown in with this article are by the author from her fieldwork in Yangon in 2020. All images copyright by Nora Wuttke.
The area between the cardiac building and the dental outpatient department is busy. People are waiting and snacking on sour-spicy mangoes and other foods from little plastic bags, many of which can be …